Caught Stealing

by Charlie Huston

  I called my folks, made sure they knew I was OK and told them not to come out or expect me to come home to be nursed. Mom cried a little, but I made her laugh in the end, telling her the testicle joke. Dad asked if I needed money and I said no. We talked about Christmas a bit and how long I’d stay when I come out and then I told them I love them and they told me they love me and we hung up and I just fucking stared at the ceiling for a while.

  I called one of the other bartenders from work. Her name is Yvonne, we used to see each other quite a bit, still do from time to time. So she’s a girl I see from time to time. She’s more than that. She’s my best friend. But I also see her from time to time. She has a key to my place, so I told her about the cat and she promised to check on it until I got home. She offered to come by the hospital, but I said no. I want to be alone. I need to figure out what the hell I’m gonna do.

  So now I’m out. I walk up to the stiff on the street and tell my kidney joke, and then I’m taking a cab home. They wanted me to stay for ten days so they could keep an eye on me and take out my staples before I left, but my lack of a) cash and b) insurance encouraged them to let me go. I’ll have the staples out in a few days and just take it easy until then. I have one kidney, I’m being forced to go cold turkey, I have a hospital bill that makes the ten grand I carry in credit card debt look like a bad joke, and I have no job. On the other hand, I pick up a paper and the Giants are on a four-game winning streak and have picked up two on the Mets, who split a four-game stand against the Phillies. I lean back into the cab seat and feel a sharp stab in my former kidney and wonder what the hell was eating those guys who beat the crap out of me.

  This is how I got the cat.

  The guy’s name is Russ and he has this cat. Russ lives in the apartment across the hall from mine and hangs out a bit at Paul’s, the place I tend bar. I know him OK and I like him. He’s never any trouble and the few times I’ve had to float him, he’s paid his tab right away. He brings me sandwiches at work sometimes. Now, one night, a couple weeks or so back, he’s outside my door holding one of those pet carriers and I can smell what’s coming. I take my eye away from the peephole and lean my forehead against the door. Russ knocks again. I take another look and he’s still there, bouncing up and down on his toes like he has to go. I let the peep snap shut and unlock the door.

  Russ has a problem. Russ has a problem and he wouldn’t even ask, but he really needs a big favor. Russ’s dad is sick. This is true. I know it’s true because Russ has mentioned before in the bar that his dad has been sick for a while. The thing is, Russ’s dad is dying now and Russ needs to take off for Rochester right away and he can’t find anyone to watch the cat and he knows this is a pain, but he really needs help. Can I take the cat for a few days, a week or two at the most?

  I’m already half in the bag and I tell him I’m gonna be drunk for a bit and I’m worried about the cat. Russ assures me the cat will be fine. He’ll bring me the cat’s special feeder that you can fill once every couple days and its litter box and all that. The cat will take care of itself. I say yes. What are you supposed to do? The guy’s dad is dying.

  Russ hands me the carry box with the cat inside and goes across the hall to get the rest of the gear. I get a beer from the fridge and stare at the box. I had a cat when I was a little kid. I had it for years and one day my mom brought home a stray puppy and a few days later the cat split. Nobody’s fault, my mom felt terrible, but I never blamed her. I blamed the fucking cat, first sign of competition and the cat splits. Fickle, cats are fickle. I like dogs.

  Russ brings back the feeder, the litter box, the shit scooper, the litter, the food, and a couple cat toys. He offers me money, but I refuse. He thanks me a couple more times and I tell him to take care of his dad and call if he needs anything and he takes off. The carry box is sitting on top of the crate that passes for my coffee table. I’m sitting there on the couch with my beer and I realize that Russ didn’t tell me the cat’s name. I lean down and look through the thin bars of the carry to get a look at the cat. It’s a house cat, a mutt cat. Gray-striped back and head with a white belly and face. Looks to be a boy. He’s wearing a collar with a little tag. I put down the beer, unlatch the door and reach in. He comes right out, no fuss. I turn him around so he’s facing me and he looks me right in the eye. The tag on the collar is flipped around and I turn it so I can read the name. Bud. I pick up my cold can of Bud while Bud the cat gets comfortable in my lap and flops down and starts to purr.

  The days roll by and I don’t hear from Russ. And to tell the truth, I just don’t mind that much at all.

  At home I have a lot of booze to deal with. I could give it to one of my neighbors, but I figure it will be good for me to actually dispose of it. In the fridge I have eighteen cans of Bud, a few bottles of white wine, and a Silver Bullet. In the freezer I find a liter of Beefeater, half-full, and a pint of some Polish buffalo grass vodka, untouched. The cabinet under the sink is the real danger zone. There are bottles of Cutty Sark, Wild Turkey, Cuervo, Myers’s, a variety of mixers in various states of undress, and full backups of the bourbon and Scotch. I also have three bottles of a killer Chianti and a tiny bottle of sake someone gave me on my birthday a few years back. I pile everything on the kitchen counter. I start with the beer, pouring it in the sink, but the smell backs up in there and my mouth starts watering, so I change my plan. I take the whole load into the bathroom and start pouring it all into the toilet. It works great and I feel very efficient: instead of drinking all this and pissing it back out, I’ve cut out the middleman. Bud comes in, props his paws on the toilet seat and takes a look at what I’m doing. He gets splashed with a little rum, shakes it off his snout, and wanders back into the other room. Smart cat.

  When I’m done, I throw all the bottles and cans into a blue plastic recycling bag and take it down two flights and out to the curb, where it will sit for God knows how many days before it’s picked up. It’s a fantastic day at the very beginning of fall. The air is clear, with the slightest chill. I go back in and get the piled-up mail from my box. I go upstairs and sort through all the bills, the advertising and credit card and calling card and insurance card offers, which leaves me with a letter from my mom and a jury duty notice. I empty the cat box. Yvonne filled Bud’s food thing and made sure he had plenty of water, but she left the crap for me. That’s all right. I take the bag with the kitty litter and junk mail out to the curb and put it next to the blue bag full of empty booze bottles. I wonder if I missed something, if maybe there’s still a full can of beer in there or the dregs of that sake. The air is just as cool as it was before, but I break a little sweat. This could be harder than I thought. I go back up, grab the phone, call my dealer and tell him I need some grass. He says he’ll be right over.

  The days I spent in the hospital got me through the worst of the shakes and nausea of coming off a binge, but I had a little help from the morphine they gave me. Before I checked out, the doctor set me up with a bottle of Vicodin, but I don’t like pills, they make me feel stupid. The bag Tim is bringing over should bridge the gap.

  Tim is a regular from Paul’s. He’s a forty-four-year-old jazz head and boozer who got lucky. A few years ago, Tim was a junkie living off welfare and the aluminum cans he picked out of other people’s trash. Then he fell into a great job and got himself off junk. The job: deliveryman for a dealer. Every morning, Tim goes to his boss’s office, where he and the other delivery guys pick up a list of clients and the product. They handle pot, hash, mushrooms, acid, and coke, and they will deliver to your home or office for no additional fee. Tim wanders all over the city, receiving a per-delivery commission and carefully saving his taxi receipts so he can get reimbursed at the end of the day. He carries a little extra grass so he can make impromptu deals on the side. He will also, in the course of the day, consume at least a fifth of Irish whiskey and some beer. Let’s face it, you don’t kick junk without filling that hole with something else. Everyone has to figure out a way to get through the da
y and booze is a very popular strategy. Tim is what we call a functioning alcoholic.

  I let him into the apartment and he flops on the couch. Tim was at the bar when I got worked over. He holds his backpack in his lap and looks me over.

  —Hey, man, how you feel?

  I tell him I feel OK. We chat about folks from the bar while I slip Kind of Blue into the CD player and Tim rolls a joint. We light up. Tim is a professional and informs me in detail about the weed we are smoking: it is a Virginian crossbreed of a classic skunk and a very potent Thai stick.

  —Most importantly, this shit was raised in the wild, not in a hydroponics tank by some mad scientist. Hold the smoke. Hold the smoke, man, you can taste the mountain air.

  I cannot, in fact, taste the mountain air, but I am getting high and, as I do, I start to think less about having a drink.

  —Hey, you got anything to drink around here?

  So much for that.

  Tim takes off a short while later. He’s a true boozer; if he doesn’t have a belt soon, his hands will start to shake. On his way out, I give him some cash for the bag and he waves as he goes down the hall, then stops for a moment.

  —Hey, did you ever find out what was up with those assholes, why they had it in for you?

  I tell him it beats me and he says so did they and gives a lame laugh, realizing it’s a bad joke. Then he leaves. It is a bad joke, but it’s a great question, and as soon as I can think straight, I’ll deal with it.

  You can only smoke so much pot. I have smoked a great deal already and it’s time for a break. I really just want to have it around to smooth out the edges for the next week or so. I figure after that I should be in good shape. This is not the first time I’ve stopped drinking. I’ve hopped on the wagon a couple of times to see how it would go and, the fact is, with the kind of motivation I have, I don’t expect to have much trouble. Just as soon as I get the system all flushed out. But right now I’m just sitting here alone in my apartment with someone else’s cat in my lap, listening to the Clash’s Combat Rock, being unemployed and in debt and thinking about beer. I decide to do the laundry.

  Tasks are good when you’re trying to give up something. They keep you occupied and make your life seem useful. I stuff my dirty clothes in a sack. I grab a handful of quarters from my change jar, but on the way to the door, I stop. Bud has a little blanket in his carry box and I decide to wash that too. Russ should be back in a day or two and it would be nice if Bud has a clean blanket. This is the way I think. It’s my mom’s fault. I grab the blanket and pull and it snags on something in the box. I tug harder and hear the blanket rip a little. I put the laundry sack down, get on my hands and knees, and reach into the box to unsnag the blanket.

  Paul’s Bar closes at 4:00 A.M. On a Thursday it’s usually all regulars by 2:00 A.M. So when I’m working, that’s when I start my serious drinking. Last Thursday there were about ten regulars hanging out in the place and I was starting to get my head on when the big guys came in. They plop down at the far end of the bar and I wander over. These guys are genuinely big; even sitting on the stools, they loom a little. But big means nothing, I’m more curious about the way they’re dressed. Both guys are wearing Nike tracksuits: one in black, one in white. They are sporting several gold chains each, which go well with the gold-rimmed Armani sunglasses they both have propped up on their shaved heads. These guys are not our usual crowd. I take them for Poles or Ukrainians left over from the old neighborhood before the East Village went Latino and then arty and now yuppie. They order an Amstel Light and a cosmopolitan. Each. They have Russianic accents. And this is still far from the weirdest pair we’ve ever had in the place, so I fix the drinks and take the cash and they say thank you.

  As I walk back down the bar to get my own drink and resume my game of movie trivia on the MegaTouch, I hear cursing behind me. I turn and the guy in the white tracksuit is holding his cosmo like the glass is full of vomit.

  —This is shit.

  He turns the glass upside down and spills it on the bar. The guy in black tastes his and promptly spits it back up, also on the bar.

  —This is also shit. I cannot drink this.

  To prove his point, he takes another sip and spits it on the bar, then he stands and walks to the trash and drops the drink, glass and all, into the can.

  I don’t like to fight. I have fought very little in my life, but what I have noticed is that even when you win, you get hurt. I work out four days a week and take boxing and self-defense on the weekends. I have steel-toed boots and a Buck knife. I have an ax handle behind the bar. None of this will help, because I don’t want to fight and these guys clearly do. I smile. I walk down the bar to the two tracksuits, a smile plastered on my semidrunk face, radiating joy and love. I am Martin Luther King. I am Gandhi. I will ask these gentlemen if they would prefer another drink or their money back. I will carefully wipe their spit off the bar and all will be at peace, because I don’t want to fight. They sit at the end of the bar, Amstels untouched, the one upturned cosmo glass before them and, as I approach, they both slip their sunglasses over their eyes like they’ve been blinded by my smile. And that is when I notice the small, girlish and simply beautiful hands they both have. I am not afraid. These men are lovers, not fighters. These men are concert pianists with graceful digits made for music, not pugilism.

  I reach the end of the bar and open my smiling mouth to offer them a round on the house as compensation for their disappointment. They grab me, drag me over the bar, and beat the crap out of me. Then they leave.

  I’ve been beat up before and had it hurt a lot worse. I don’t even look that bad. But I do close the bar early and spend the next several hours drinking and holding an ice pack to my ribs while Tim, a couple other regulars and I tell fight stories: the high and low moments of beating and getting beat. We have chalked up the tracksuits as psychos and, hey, what more can you say? A few hours later the blood shows up in my piss.

  I give Bud’s blanket a gentle tug and I can feel that it’s caught on something. I reach in and feel around, expecting to find a flange of molded plastic or some other deformity in the case itself. There is a flat object taped to the bottom of the box and the corner of the blanket is caught under a bit of the tape. What I took for tearing blanket was tearing tape. I untangle the blanket and, in the process, I detach the object. It is a tiny manila envelope that feels like it contains a key. I look at the envelope. The key feels odd, a bit bulky in some way. This is not mine. This is not my business. This is the spare key to Russ’s apartment or his safe deposit box or something. It is not for me and I suddenly feel nosy. I untangle the tape and reattach the key as best I can, trying to get it exactly right. I also put the blanket back in. If the blanket is clean, Russ might figure I saw the envelope and it could make him uptight. This is what I’m thinking. Then I think about having a drink and this reminds me about the laundry. I pick up the sack, say good-bye to Bud and leave. I never put two and two together and, after all, why should I?

  I moved into the East Village about ten years ago, when I first came to New York. There was a little grocery downstairs from me where you could walk up to the counter and buy crack or dope or coke. It’s a nail salon now and there’s a sushi restaurant across the street. There are still plenty of junkies and burned-out storefronts and a handful of hookers, but the wild wild west feel the place had when I got here is gone. Condos, boutiques, and bistros are popping up like fungus. But murders, muggings, and rapes are way down, so when people bitch about gentrification I usually tell them to fuck off. I like sushi fine and the Japanese girls in the salon hold my UPS packages when I’m not home. And, hey, the place still has color.

  I come out of my building with my buzz on and stand for a moment at the curb and enjoy the fall sun. Jason is sprawled at my feet. Jason is a wino who has lived on this block from before I ever got here. He’s a real old-fashioned wet-brain drunk. He is also the barometer of my own drinking habits and this moment is a good one for me to see Jason s
prawled on the sidewalk at midday, utterly unconscious, with a shortdog of T-Bird still in his hand. I step over him and head for the laundry.

  The truth is, I’m pushing it a little bit here. The doctor who yanked my kidney told me to take it real easy, going up and down the stairs with garbage and doing my laundry is probably not what he had in mind. I think he had more the lounging-around-on-the-couch kind of easy in mind. But I need the action, so I separate my darks and lights and add my detergent and bleach and softener and pump quarters into the machines at the Korean laundry. The place is pretty much empty, so I sprawl across two seats, pick up a Daily News someone has abandoned and check some scores.

  This is what is left of the season:

  The Giants will close a series against the Rockies today, then have three games on the road against the Dodgers.

  The Mets will finish off the Marlins and play three home games against the Braves.

  I will not cry when the Giants lose. I just don’t have it in me anymore.

  I move my clothes to the dryer and flip through the rest of the paper.

  The dryer stops drying and I get my clothes. Everything is piping hot and I’m tempted to change jeans right there just to get that toasty feeling on a chilly day. I settle for slipping on a warm sweatshirt. I fold everything and pack it all back into my bag. I haven’t thought about a beer in about an hour or at least no more than once or twice. Mission accomplished, I balance the laundry bag on my shoulder and go home.

  Outside my front door I shift the bag from my right shoulder to my left to dig for my keys. This is a mistake. I no longer have a left kidney. What I do have is a big hole held closed by a bunch of staples. When I stretch my left arm up to hold the bag on my shoulder, my staples also stretch. Or rather the flesh stretches and my staples stay right where they are. I gasp and squeak a little at the pain and drop the bag, spin around and do a little pain dance. Then I get my shit together along with my keys and put the bag back on my right shoulder.